Search - cabinet

 
 
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Nov 3, 2009

Demography vs. demagoguery: when politics, science collide

Last June, I attended a symposium sponsored by the German Institute of Japanese Studies. Themed "Imploding Populations: Global and Local Challenges of Demographic Change," I took in presentations about health care, international and domestic migration, and life in a geriatric society.
EDITORIALS
Nov 2, 2009

JAL from the ground up

Struggling Japan Airlines Corp., following recommendations made by a task force of the transport ministry, has given up trying to reconstruct itself on its own and has put itself under virtually direct state supervision. Specifically, the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp. (ETIC) of Japan, which...
BUSINESS
Oct 31, 2009

Rehab team eyes legislation to cut JAL pensions

The government formed a team Friday to discuss measures for financially troubled Japan Airlines Corp., including a bridge loan JAL is expected to need for survival as early as next month and proposed legislation to cut the carrier's pension benefits.
EDITORIALS
Oct 30, 2009

LDP makes its intentions clear

The Diet got down to business Wednesday with a plenary session in which party representatives posed questions to the government. Liberal Democratic Party leader Sadakazu Tanigaki, a former finance minister and now an opposition leader, led off by grilling Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in the Lower House....
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2009

Japan-U.S. ties need revamp: Hatoyama

In light of next year marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Thursday it's time the overall defense alliance is reviewed.
COMMENTARY
Oct 30, 2009

Significance of East Asia

There have been renewed debates over the pros and cons of forming an East Asia community ever since the Hatoyama Cabinet advocated its promotion. Such debates have triggered the argument in the United States (and among some Japanese journalists) that East Asia community building runs counter to U.S....
BUSINESS
Oct 30, 2009

Japan, U.S. trail in hiking interest rates

The global monetary policy divide is widening as the U.S. Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan and major counterparts lag behind Norway and Australia in raising interest rates, a trend that is set to continue into 2010.
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2009

LDP fires salvo at Hatoyama

The Liberal Democratic Party, as the new embodiment of the opposition camp, wasted no time Wednesday in lashing out against the Democratic Party of Japan administration, grilling the Cabinet for lacking a long-term vision on national strategies and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's political funds scandal....
JAPAN
Oct 29, 2009

Hatoyama's talk of 'equal' ties leaves U.S. in dark

Japan and the United States need to rethink their relationship and expand their ties from a narrow alliance to a partnership that can deal with a broad range of global challenges, American foreign policy experts said in a recent symposium in Tokyo.
EDITORIALS
Oct 28, 2009

Mr. Hatoyama states his politics

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama made his first keynote address to the Diet on Monday. He should be commended for summing up his "politics of fraternity" in his own words — thus dumping the practice of pasting together sentences written by bureaucrats from various ministries.
BUSINESS
Oct 28, 2009

JAL downfall not just its own doing

With Cabinet ministers indicating Japan Airlines Corp. may get an injection of public funds, a transport ministry task force is in the final stages of compiling a rehabilitation plan for the struggling carrier.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 28, 2009

Hatoyama pushing economy 'backward,' Takenaka says

Heizo Takenaka, the architect of policy changes credited with securing Japan's longest postwar economic expansion, blasted the Democratic Party of Japan-led government for undermining prospects for recovery.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Oct 27, 2009

File-sharing: Handle Winny at your own risk

More than a decade since the heyday of Napster shareware, peer-to-peer file distribution remains a key tool for Internet users exchanging music and movie files online. The leading program in Japan is Winny, an application distributed free of charge since May 2002 by former University of Tokyo researcher...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 27, 2009

Immigration showing signs of ninjo

Last month, I was asked to take part in a public panel discussion on the recently released Harrison Ford blockbuster "Crossing Over." In the film, Ford plays an L.A. Immigration and Customs officer with a conscience, increasingly disturbed by the human consequences of his job.
JAPAN
Oct 22, 2009

Guam move depends on Futenma: Gates

The planned relocation of 8,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam will suffer a setback if Tokyo does not abide by other agreements on the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Wednesday.
COMMENTARY
Oct 22, 2009

Does Japan really want to stay competitive?

LONDON — The reported remarks to members of the foreign press in Tokyo on Oct. 14 by Shizuka Kamei, Japan's minister for financial issues, made me wonder whether he was living in the real world — where nations are interdependent and must compete to survive.
COMMENTARY
Oct 21, 2009

Fading trust in the political class

LONDON — The world is clearly passing through a crisis of political legitimacy. People in growing numbers do not trust their governments or their governing classes. In many cases they despise them.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past